


The Last Time

by miabicicletta



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So much eludes him after years alone on his hill in the great valley. So much has been taken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Time

**Title:** The Last Time  
 **Author:** miabicicletta  
 **Summary:** So much eludes him after years alone on his hill in the great valley. So much has been taken.  
 **Pairing:** Adama/Roslin  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Wordcount:** 1,065  
 **Notes:** For plausiblyremote on LJ, who wanted a look at the first morning Bill and Laura woke up together. This ended up being more of a post-Daybreak, Pt II lamentation of things gone by, with some similarities to my fic The Road to Ithaka, but I hope you like it nonetheless, lady. You are awesome and I loved the prompt :D Suggested listening for this fic is: **[Not Dark Yet by Bob Dylan](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZgBhyU4IvQ&ob=av3e)**.

\---

 _To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,_  
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,  
To the last syllable of recorded time...  
-MacBeth, (Act 5, Scene 5)

\---

Bill wants a name to call this place but there is none. His mind is becoming foggy, his sight clouded. He’s begun to forget things as he grows weaker. So much eludes him after years alone on his hill in the great valley. So much has been taken.

The fact of it is plain: He is old, and there is no Laura anymore to make him feel young. No Laura to love like the young man he no longer is, as if tomorrow does not matter. No Laura to hold close, making the night pass in a moment. Now the nights, nights with the days, pass slow. Each as uneventful as the last.

He does not read anymore, only writes.

Bill finds himself filling a notebook with his memories. They will be gone from him soon, and he records his history for the posterity he once told her mattered. No one will ever find it, but still, he puts his pencil to the page, and when the nub is worn to the bit, he thinks of all the pencils so casually broken in Laura Roslin’s hands. Even when it means his own abrupt ending, he cannot help but smile. She broke many things in their time together. Broke her word and his Fleet; broke families and alliances; broke his resolve, and his heart. Broke so much of him, by the end.

Still he smiles. He thinks of the times he needed the breaking, and the mending. Smiles wider still at the strength that grew where the cracks were healed, and holds in his heart the memory of laughter.

\---

He didn’t sleep the night they first made love, too distracted by the woman draped against him to accept any respite. How could he rest with her gentle breathing against his collar? How could he sleep, when her icy hands held him close. How could he face a tomorrow without her in it. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

He never slept the nights with Laura at his side, always too afraid it might be their last.

\---

When his notebook is filled, he pulls blank pages from the beginning and ends of his books, and adds the loose-leaf pages to his collection. One day, as he examines a novel, a single, crisp page falls to the floor. Bending with strain, he reaches for it. He sits in a chair, places his glasses (little help though they are) upon the bridge of his nose, and reads.

 _Bill,_ the letter begins.

His heart constricts. He would recognize this handwriting anywhere.

_As I write this, you are off walking with Lee. The sun is warm here. So warm that even I can feel its heat._

_Bill. I do not have much time. I know this; I hope you have accepted the way the pieces must fall._

_I hope, too, that by now you are reading this in our cabin and that as you do, you are remembering the good times. We did not have many, but, for me, they were worth it. You were worth it. Always._

_For all we have been through since that day we met, so many years and half a lifetime ago, I find myself thinking of our rare and precious moments in these, my final ones._

_Remember that above all, I loved you. That I do still. That I will, for ever and for always._

_Laura_

The sharp, prick of tears blurs his fading vision even more. Strangely, he wants nothing more than to hear Lee’s voice at this moment. To hold his firstborn in his arms a final time. To show him Laura’s words and ask him to keep remembering. To keep her alive. A time will come in a few generations when there will be no soul left who knew her name.

Silent tears course ancient tracks down his face. In this message from beyond, he has felt Laura’s death all over again. Her death, and all his failures. They should never have sent Sam into the sun. Never so willfully forgotten who they were, or where they came from. Scattered out across this world, losing what few, precious bonds they’d kept. Laura’s letter in his hand, he remembers them all. Knows the places they inhabit as if his heart were a map of _Galactica_ , and his loved ones her most faithful:

Lee, if not dead, then gone all the same. His eldest child, and his last.

Saul, his brother-in-arms, his friend. The most human of men Bill has even known, and it doesn’t matter that he wasn’t.

Zak, lost beneath the burning ground, far from home.

Kara, dead but refusing to die, somewhere between this life and the next, unable to let go. Perhaps, more than anything else, this was what he saw in her that made her his child, blood be damned.

Laura, buried in the red clay of Earth. He strained to read her words once more. _Remember_ , she wrote. _Remember that I loved you._ After all she gave him, he could give her that.

He picks up the book, seeing the words before him, but either they did not register or they no longer held the same meaning as they once did. He’s still never finished the last chapter of _Searider Falcon_.

"Almost done, Bill. This is the last part."

The spaces she left behind have their own things to say, he has found. Now, he can almost hear her voice after all this time, still there, just over his shoulder. Can almost feel the tickle of her hair, _her_ hair, not the austere wig she's worn at the end, looking like Persephone dragged down to Hades.

"Read to me?"

He laughs at that, before his throaty chuckle disintegrated into a heavy, wracking cough. The sky was red with the fading sun. The color reminds him of things so long ago, they don’t feel like his memories anymore. Barren, rock-strewn fields of the bloody northern plain, far back on Tauron. The ocher rust collecting on the rivets of his first Mark II. Red, like a dress he once loved.

He opens the book and begins to read for the last time.

\---

As always, comments are adored and appreciated.


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